Sons of the Hydra

by Rob Sanders

  ‘I’m not sure even we know where we are,’ Occam said, ‘but let us do what we came here to do. Sorcerer, are you with us?’

  ‘For the Emperor…’ Carcinus Quoda managed, pushing himself up unsteadily from the deck.

  ‘Aye,’ Malik said, handing out Word Bearers plasma guns, wicked blades, melta bombs and daemon-sculpted bolt pistols to Quoda and the strike master.

  ‘For the Emperor,’ Occam echoed, nodding before leading what remained of the Redacted off the command deck and down to the main airlock.

  ψ

  The Reptilian Brain

  Stepping off the daemon ship and onto the flat plaza decorating the top of the pyramid, Occam became immediately aware of something strange in his environment. It wasn’t the atmosphere or temperature, which his plate registered as within acceptable parameters. It was the gravity.

  The pyramid was impossibly tall and commanded an incredible view of the ancient but empty cityscape that sprawled and curved across the interior of the globe. It was crafted of a type of black stone with which Occam was unfamiliar and was covered in green glowing lines in a pattern like some kind of alien circuit. It reminded the strike master of the Tesseraqt.

  Moving was strange at first. Occam led Quoda and Malik across the plaza and down the pyramid side, where a set of black steps took them into the city and towards a grand ceremonial reception area. Ornamental pits flanked the steps, punctuating the Redacted’s progress on either side. It seemed that everything had been reversed within the hollow planet. Cities clung to the planet interior rather than its outer shell, with towers and looming monuments pointing vertiginously up towards the suspended core. The core established a gravitational pull that was itself a reversal of what Occam expected. His steps did not have the reassuring thud of gravity dragging him down. He felt that if he slipped down one of the ornamental pits he would not fall far – no further than he could ordinarily jump in his powered plate. If he were to leap from the steps, however, he feared that he might not return to solid ground but instead fall upwards towards the glowing planetary core. It was disorientating in the extreme.

  Further down the side of the pyramid, the exertion took its toll on Quoda and the sorcerer stumbled, forcing Malik to make a grab for him. Righting himself, Quoda pushed on, insisting that he was all right. As Malik and Occam exchanged glances, the legionnaire noticed something beyond and indicated to his strike master. The ancient city was silent and empty, but there was movement ahead, figures in plate working their way up the steps to meet them. Occam’s gauntlets creaked as he held his plasma gun at the ready. Ready for anything. Ready for everything.

  As the Redacted moved down to meet the oncomers, he saw that they were garbed in the colours of the Alpha Legion. This should have put Occam at ease, yet it didn’t. With traitors like the Word Bearers back on the ship, Occam knew what he was getting. He understood their deviance. All traitors and renegades were predictable in their own ways. With the Alpha Legion, however, anything was possible.

  The legionnaires didn’t show any obvious signs of outward corruption. As Occam closed with them, they stood aside on the steps to create an armed escort. If the detail of their plate was anything to go by the group appeared to be made up of legionnaires from different warbands. An officer in black plate, the faint coils of serpentine patterning and a helm boasting a bulbous targeting optic, came forward.

  ‘You are of the Legion but unknown to us,’ the officer said in a thick accent. ‘What is your business here?’

  ‘I am Occam, strike master of the Redacted,’ Occam returned. ‘I seek an audience with the Lord Dominatus. I have travelled far to meet with him and have fought unknowingly in his service. I would fight knowingly, but for questions that remain unanswered.’

  ‘And you would have the Lord Dominatus answer your questions?’ the officer asked.

  ‘I would have the Lord Dominatus act in accordance with his wisdom and conscience,’ Occam said.

  ‘You will not need your weapons,’ the officer said, gesturing to the plasma gun pulled in close to Occam’s midriff – its muzzle wavering unconsciously from one legionnaire to another. The armed escort stepped forth to take the plasma guns and slip bolt pistols from holsters but the Redacted suddenly stiffened, Occam and Malik bringing their plasma guns up level with their optics. While the strike master covered the officer and the front, Malik swept the muzzle of his weapon around the back. A fatigued Quoda tried to lift his weapon from where he loosely held it at his hip but failed.

  The escort seemed unconcerned. The red dots of targeters drifted across the Redacted’s plate from legionnaires hidden in surrounding structures.

  ‘You are Alpha Legion, yes?’ Occam put to the officer.

  ‘As are you,’ the legionnaire said, burning into the strike master with his bulbous targeter.

  ‘Then, brother, you know that only a fool would give up his weapons right now,’ Occam said, ‘and none of us here are fools.’

  The officer seemed to consider Occam’s argument before nodding his helm at the flanking escort and turning to lead the Redacted down the side of the pyramid.

  At the bottom of the structure, the escort peeled off and the officer led Occam and his legionnaires through the strange alien architecture and sculptures of a reception plaza. Ancient tombs and monuments reared up, framing the hollow sky with jagged black stone. Everything was saturated in a queasy red and green. Green circuits ran through the black stone, the illumination from which mixed horribly with the furnace-glow of the suspended molten core. The tops of alien temples burned with a green phosphorescence while towering monoliths of midnight stone projected stabilising beams of green energy.

  Occam picked out the shapes of Alpha Legionnaires manning sentry posts and criss-crossing the reception plaza with the red beams of targets that never left the Redacted. It was difficult to estimate the numbers encamped here in the hollowed centre of a dead world. Gunships lifted off from dark quads and ran legionnaires, operatives and materiel between the stationed flotilla of Alpha Legion vessels and the camp. A smaller pyramid forming the rear of the reception plaza opened, bleeding green light into the open space. The towering black throne that formed the centrepiece of the reception plaza became framed in the alien luminescence and a procession of silhouettes proceeded from the opening. Occam thought that he could make out robed cultists, Alpha Legion renegades in powered plate and the freakish shapes of varied xenos operatives.

  When they had left, another figure filled the opening, a towering black shape. His outline was suggestive of ornate plate while the nodes of his pack were crafted into a pair of serpents, facing and spitting at one another across a fanged helm. He walked towards the Redacted, half obscured by the throne. The legionary colours of his plate were so deep that Occam thought him lost in them and a luxurious cloak of glittering scale slithered behind him.

  As the tall figure walked up and around the spiral steps of the elevated throne, the Alpha Legion officer went down on one knee. Legionnaires at sentry posts about the reception plaza did the same. Occam turned to Malik and nodded. The pair lowered their plasma guns and took a knee also. The withered Quoda needed little persuading to do the same.

  As the figure sat in the looming throne, looking down on the plaza, the officer stood.

  ‘My Lord Dominatus,’ he proclaimed. ‘Newcomers have arrived without clearance or invitation. Occam, strike master of the Redacted, begs you for an audience.’

  ‘That is not strictly true, my lord,’ Occam called, getting up off his knee. Malik and Quoda followed suit. ‘We have been invited.’

  ‘By who?’ the Lord Dominatus called back, his commanding voice cutting through the alien architecture of the plaza like a blade. It carried the wisdom of age with the enthusiasm of relentless youth. ‘For it was not me. You are one of few to have made it here without guidance.’

  ‘I fought for the Angelbane,’ Occam said, ‘exterminating the Emperor’s servants about the borders of the Maelstrom in your na
me.’

  ‘A worthy cause,’ the Lord Dominatus said. ‘And indeed I did set the one known as the Angelbane to such service. I know not those he recruited in turn. Where is the Angelbane now?’

  ‘Dead, my lord,’ Occam said, honestly. ‘By my hand but with your mission accomplished.’

  ‘Some might call that treachery…’

  ‘And some necessary,’ Occam returned. ‘I fear he served himself as much as he did your interests, my lord.’

  ‘And you killed him for me?’ the Lord Dominatus said. ‘Only a member of the Alpha Legion could claim to prove his loyalty by stabbing his brother in the back.’

  ‘He was a serpent whose mind had been baked in the heat of battle, my lord,’ Occam told him. ‘Striking out at all around him, friend and foe. I killed him because I had to.’

  ‘He was a tool I held at arm’s length,’ the Lord Dominatus said, ‘where his talents were employed at their best. Now you have come here, uninvited and expect me to take you into my trust?’

  ‘We fight for the same thing, Lord Dominatus,’ Occam said. ‘Something madmen like Quetzel Carthach and many of our fallen brothers could barely comprehend.’

  ‘And what is that?’ the Lord Dominatus asked, getting up out of his throne.

  ‘We fight for the Emperor,’ Occam said. ‘I for always and you still. For his blood runs through your veins and you make his strength your own.’

  ‘A bold claim for both of us,’ the Lord Dominatus said, dropping off the elevated throne and landing with cat-like grace in his glorious plate. The black stone cracked about the impact of his boots. ‘Who do you think I am?’

  ‘I hope,’ the strike master confessed, ‘and I fear that you are father to an orphaned Legion. That you are the son of a god and humanity’s last chance for survival.’

  The Lord Dominatus approached slowly. He leant in to share a private confidence with Occam but the intensity of his presence made the strike master take a step back.

  ‘I have lived long,’ the Lord Dominatus told him, ‘and I have heard many such stories in my time. I wish I was the one you speak of. For the good of the Emperor, his Legion and his people. But I am not.’

  ‘You are the second son,’ Occam insisted. ‘You have to be. You are the Omega, and we the Alpha. The end and a new beginning. You can take us out of the shadows and into the light of the Emperor’s mercy. You hide here in the dead heart of an empire that wants to live. We can watch it fall to the fires of oblivion or wither and rot on the vine, but if we act – together, as one Legion – we can save it. Through us it can bloom again and usher in a second Golden Age.’

  ‘What you talk of cannot be done,’ the Lord Dominatus said savagely.

  ‘What is the alternative?’ Occam demanded. ‘Here you sit on your hollow throne, gathering idle sons and launching proxy wars through those who actually dare to believe in you. Make the Legion your own once more. Drag it back out from the darkness and give those who have lost their way direction. Unite us. Lead us, lord primarch.’

  ‘He’s right,’ a voice proceeded from the shadows. ‘What you speak of cannot be done. At least, not by the Lord Dominatus…’

  ω

  Ouroboros

  Occam recognised the voice.

  Its metallic hiss belonged to Omizhar Vohk. Both Occam and the Lord Dominatus stared about the plaza.

  ‘Xenos?’ Occam said, but the alien was one with the darkness.

  ‘Your hope does not reside in this living lie,’ Vohk said. ‘This thing exists only for death. It is oblivion incarnate. An end to all things, natural and otherwise.’

  The Lord Dominatus peered about the plaza and then across at the legionnaires manning their posts.

  ‘So, you come all this way to play games with me,’ he told Occam, producing a scowl of confusion from the strike master. The Lord Dominatus gave a signal and the legionnaires fell in, searching the plaza and probing the shadows with their boltguns. ‘You will regret that.’

  ‘Lord primarch, no, I would–’

  ‘This thing is not your galactic prince,’ Vohk went on, his metallic voice coming from everywhere at once. ‘No mere primarch stands before you. This creature strides the void. It feasts upon the stars, leaving the sky in deepest darkness. It lives deception as you breathe air. Transcendent. Timeless. Vampiric. The ghostly reflection of blinding doom in a shattered mirror.’

  ‘Enough of this,’ the Lord Dominatus roared, clearly infuriated at the accusations. ‘Have your operative show yourself.’

  ‘My operative?’ Occam marvelled. ‘But Omizhar Vohk works for you. He pledged us to your service and brought us to this dread place.’

  ‘Omizhar Vohk…’ the Lord Dominatus said, stomping about the plaza and looking for the xenos. As he did, more legionnaires poured out of the entrance of the small pyramid to join the search. ‘Omizhar Vohk, I know that name.’

  ‘As I know yours, star god,’ Vohk said. ‘Mephet’ran… the Deceiver.’

  ‘I thought I had rid this world of your miserable kind,’ the Lord Dominatus said.

  ‘Not quite,’ Omizhar Vohk said. ‘I have returned, Deceiver. To ensure the survival of my dynasty and avenge the lifeless alloy of my kindred. To undo what has been done and bring this realm of lies crashing down into the dust.’

  ‘Of course,’ the Lord Dominatus said. ‘Omizhar Vohk. The techno-sorcerer. You think you can imprison a god? I am shard-born. I am of the Deceiver. Did you think that I would not get free? That there wouldn’t be consequences? I am no weapon to be wielded by the lesser races of the galaxy. How does it feel, techno-sorcerer, to have such a weapon turned back upon your people? They might have been obliterated by my hand but it was you, Omizhar Vohk, who unleashed me upon the galaxy. Do not forget that. Never forget that.’

  ‘I appeal to every mortal thing on this planet,’ Omizhar Vohk said. ‘Everything living and breathing. Of flesh loyal or polluted. This abomination will end us all. The havoc it has sown through manipulation of the renegade Legions is merely the beginning. It means to extend the ancient technologies of my race out beyond the Galactic Core and cut you off from your immaterial realm. The Sea of Souls will dry up, carrying no more your vessels or messages to distant worlds. Your gifted will no longer be able to draw upon their powers or the afflicted achieve communion with entities unclean. Indeed, the storms such beings called home will be swallowed by silence. Destroy this thing before the Deceiver feasts upon the souls of your people as he has done mine.’

  Occam the Untrue stared up at the Lord Dominatus.

  ‘Kill the interlopers!’ the Lord Dominatus snarled to his own legionnaires.

  Occam felt the hesitation. The Alpha Legion renegades, all pledged in service to the Lord Dominatus, had guarded his hollow planetary stronghold. They had operated out of the Galactic Core. They had helped him carry out his manipulations and puppetry far beyond. Listening to the voice of Omizhar Vohk, momentary doubt had crept into their hearts and minds. No less than his legionary brothers, Occam had to face the fact that he too had been caught up in the Deceiver’s lies and Omizhar Vohk’s machine vengeance.

  ‘Down!’ Occam called, pushing a feverish Quoda behind a sculpture just moments before a blasting stream of Alpha Legion boltfire tore across the plaza. Malik spun around and blazed several orbs of plasma back at the attacking legionnaires, turning one into bubbling slag and scorching a second.

  ‘No,’ Occam called to the former Night Lord. ‘We must unmask that thing.’

  Using the alien architecture for cover and with bolt-mangled black stone shredding all about him, the strike master fired upon the Lord Dominatus. Occam blasted sphere after raging sphere of superheated plasma at the figure in ornate plate. The Lord Dominatus roared in pain and fury. Occam pumped at the trigger, sending continual plasma shots at the Lord Dominatus, soon joined by Malik and Quoda. All the while architecture shattered about them as boltfire criss-crossed the plaza from Alpha Legion sentries.

  The Lord Dominatus bellowed, holding
out his gauntlets to deflect the plasma. Spheres of crackling energy blazed into his plate left and right, producing howls of monstrous anguish from the target. As his hands melted away and his cloak caught fire, the Lord Dominatus turned into a raging inferno. Occam’s hydrogen flask ran dry and he dropped the plasma gun, instead snatching a melta bomb from his belt. Cranking the grenade, he let it fly, and it detonated as it struck the Lord Dominatus. Instead of vaporising, however, he blazed into brilliance, transforming into a tornado of white flame.

  The shockwave knocked Occam back and put a swift end to the boltfire aimed his way. The column reached upwards, twining and turning in fury before crackling and raging in contact with the agitated surface of the planetary core.

  Occam backed from the manifesting star god. Within the tornado of raw elemental power, he could see a towering, spindly nightmare of glorious horn, claw and perfect limb. Like a thundering angel of destruction it whirled gracefully within the storm, its face a mask of alien ferocity.

  The force of the star god’s storm began to tear up the black stone of the floor about it. Ancient structures were demolished and sky-scraping monuments shattered to join a secondary storm of black rubble and chunks of debris that orbited the Deceiver.

  Malik grabbed Occam and pulled him back out of the path of a smashed statue that had been ripped up next to him. Quoda was thrown aside by a stream of rubble that crumpled his plate but the sorcerer managed to get back to his feet and stumble through the storm back towards his strike master.

  ‘We’ve got to go!’ Malik called through the cyclone.

  ‘No,’ Occam roared. ‘This thing has to be destroyed.’

  Moving back across the plaza through the high winds and rattle of debris across their plate, the Redacted retreated. Occam adjusted his vox to an open channel.

  ‘All legionnaires, all legionnaires,’ Occam called across the channel. ‘This is Strike Master Occam of the Redacted. We have been deceived. This alien entity has fooled us all, brothers. It has used us and made a mockery of our Legion’s honourable name. But the Alpha Legion adapts. The hydra strikes with many heads. Let us turn the monstrous fury of our collective upon this heathen god. Hit it with everything you’ve got. For Alpharius! For the Emperor! For the Legion!’